No matter where your business is on the mobile continuum, listen up. Kennedy points out that emerging channel no longer applies to mobile. In fact, mobile advertising grew by over 75 percent in 2013 alone and along with social media, is now an essential part of every digital marketing strategy. Many experts are calling 2013 the year of mobile--a long-predicted shift that finally happened in a big way.

But 2014 is shaping up to be another big, outstanding year in mobile. So it’s time to get onboard or bolster your current mobile marketing efforts. To do that in the most effective ways, though, it’s important to try and envision how events might unfold next year in the ever-changing mobile marketing industry. That’s where Kennedy comes in, by highlighting important trends and innovations that are likely to occur in 2014. You’ll definitely want to read the article but here are several key insights that will have w impact:

Email’s becoming a mobile-first channel.While email has traditionally been a more desktop-and laptop-based channel, that’s all changing. Email is expected to become a mobile-first channel in 2014! Which means you need to be optimizing email marketing for mobile NOW.

New mobile ad formats will emerge, including five-second mobile video spots.Get ready for new mobile ad formats. Facebook’s in-stream ad format and promoted Tweets from Twitter are just two examples. Pinterest is expected to roll out its own this year, and it’s expected to be huge. The real action is in mobile video, not in repurposing a 30-second video but in five- and 10-second mobile video spots. And with ubiquitous software, apps and HD cameras, anyone can do it.

Twitter ads will expand to third-party Twitter clients.Most Twitter client apps (Tweetlines, Tweetbot) either don’t have ads or have paid versions that remove Twitter ads from the user experience. But Twitter needs to increase revenue by expanding its advertising platform. In fact, this is critical for Twitter. After all, it’s estimated that nearly 90 percent of time spent on Twitter in 2013 was on a mobile device! Twitter’s advertising approach so far has been well received by users because it has integrated ads naturally into its content. So this bodes well for Twitter’s ability to build new advertising partnerships.

Facebook’s FBX will go mobile, and it will dominate.Facebook used to call Facebook Exchange (FBX) a very small part of its business. But that’s all changed, since analysts predict that FBX will eventually make up 60 percent of Facebook’s total revenue! To make that happen, FBX must go mobile. And that should be a game changer.

The bottom line is this. Mobile is increasingly where it’s at, and every marketer needs to up his/her investment in mobile in 2014. While some small businesses and B2B marketers may not have fully embraced mobile marketing up until now, they can no longer afford to sit out. Mobile tech and popularity are converging, and next year marketers are expecting to see significant mobile ROI.

Reinforcing the virtually limitless possibility of mobile for small business is Georgetown University adjunct professor Sashi Bellamkonda in a post on the IBM blog, asmarterplanet.com. The key question is, How can business owners stay ahead of the mobile curve?

It’s now an absolute must, Bellamkonda says, for businesses to have up-to-date and accurate information about customers across all online channels. Especially key, he says, is the ability to extract analytic insight into all this mobile activity and determining what kind of content, feedback and posts are driving the most engagement.

Another critical element for small businesses: Location, location, location, because people on the go are constantly doing mobile searches for all kinds of businesses and experiences. Would you believe that, for restaurants in particular, 64 percent of these mobile searches convert to real business within one hour? Incredible!

As if that weren’t enough of a billboard for mobile, consider another fast-growing trend: Speeding up the purchasing process even more with mobile wallet technology. True, younger consumers are at the leading edge of this, but we all pretty much expect that sooner rather than later, mobile devices will eventually replace cash and credit cards.

Professor Bellamkonda encourages small business owners to dive headlong into mobile if you haven’t already. All indications are that the coming year will explode with even more mobile-based business opportunity!Image courtesy of Feelart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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